Buy Mom a membership to her favorite environmental organization, state park, local audubon society, local museum, zoo, or aquarium that supports environmental initiatives and education.

Give her a bucket filled with non-toxic cleaning products. Include a small homemade card offering to help her with the household chores. An alternative is The Little Cleaning Box! It comes with a variety of cleaning product samples and every 90 days, a new box comes!

Give Her a Jolt of Java:

Buy a membership to a coffee CSA through CoffeeCSA.org. You can even pay to plant a tree on a small coffee farm as an extra gift!

Soothe her with a selection of organic, fair trade teas, from Green, Earl Grey and Irish Breakfast to specialty loose teas such as Darjeeling First Blush from Equal Exchange.

Give a card made of plantable seed paper; bury it and when the paper biodegrades, the seeds grow into wildflowers.

Give Her the Farm:

Membership in a farm co-op will bring farm fresh produce to eco-friendly mom’s dinner table every week throughout the summer growing season. A farm co-op membership for Mother’s Day allows mom to choose pesticide-free, locally grown, organic produce each week throughout the summer growing season.

Green Inventory the House

Do a green inventory of the house for Mother’s Day and make changes to improve its green rating. String up a clothesline, purchase and install new light bulbs, find a suitable container from the household stockpile and decorate it to serve as Mom’s new scrap collector for her composting bin, install power strips, or buy her a stack of reusable cloth shopping and produce bags.

Improving the nation’s power grid is a huge task. Is “Race to the Top” the right model? Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. But is duplicating “Race to the Top” the way to get a new energy grid up and running?

If you don’t keep track of education policy, Race to the Top is the Obama administration’s signature schools initiative, with $4 billion in federal grant money awarded to states in a competition for the best education reform plans. In effect, the plan offers a carrot rather than a stick to states that implement broadly-backed reforms such as “common core standards,” new data systems for measuring progress, and overhauls in how teachers and principals are judged.

Challenges States to Cut Energy Waste and Support Energy Efficiency and Modernize the Grid. Modeled after a successful Administration approach in education reform designed to promote forward-leaning policies at the State level, the Budget includes $200 million in one-time funding for Race to the Top performance based awards to support State governments that implement effective policies to cut energy waste and modernize the grid. Key opportunities for States include: modernizing utility regulations to encourage cost-effective investments in efficiency, including combined heat and power and demand response resources, and in clean distributed generation; enhancing customer access to data; investments that improve the reliability, security and resilience of the grid; and enhancing the sharing of information regarding grid conditions.

Even putting the bureaucratic prose aside, this is obviously going to need to be fleshed out quite a lot before anyone can judge how effective it will be. But here are a few questions based on the education world’s Race to the Top that are worth considering:

Do the states have enough skin in this game? There’s no question that education is a state government responsibility. State and local governments put up the lion’s share of the money for public schools, set the standards, hire the teachers, and face the voters when things go wrong.

The electricity grid, by contrast, isn’t something state governments run directly. It’s something states regulate, with most of the money and the management handled by private utility companies. And it’s more questionable whether voters hold states accountable for the grid. Race to the Top could directly affect decisions made in schools. With the power grid, state policy is one step removed from those actually doing the work. The impact may play out differently.

Is there enough of a consensus on what needs to be done? While Race to the Top could be controversial, generally speaking it promoted ideas that many governors and educators already accepted. States had to implement certain policies even to participate – for example, states couldn’t have any laws preventing them from using test scores to evaluate teachers. Even so, some states, like Texas and Virginia, passed on the federal competition in order to implement their own school plans. And of course, the debate over the state role in health care reform, where many states resisted participating in different elements of “Obamacare,” shows what can happen if states don’t buy into a federal program.

There are certainly models to follow here – the Energy Department’s Strategic Plan for Grid Modernization presents a compelling example. But have governors bought into these plans on what can and should be done about the grid?

Is this enough money to make a difference? In education, Race to the Top dangled a tasty enough carrot in front of state governments to make it worth their while to change policies and develop plans to participate. New York state alone got $700 million in federal money. But $200 million in energy grants spread out over multiple states isn’t going to go very far. The task before us is massive. Some 30 percent of the grid is 40 to 50 years old, in a network that connects more than 15,000 power plants, 220,000 miles of high voltage lines, and another 5 million miles of distribution. Private utilities spend about $5 billion a year on upgrades, and it isn’t enough. New Jersey’s PSE&G alone has proposed spending $3.9 billion over 10 years to strengthen its system after Hurricane Sandy. Overall, the Electric Power Research Institute estimated we need up to $476 billion to modernize the grid nationwide.

Maybe the $200 million could be effective if focused on crucial sticking points in state government policies. But we still need to leverage those changes to encourage the necessary private investment in the grid.

The idea of a “race to the top” for the energy grid is certainly appealing. There’s no question we need new and compelling methods to get states and utilities to the starting line. But it still isn’t clear whether the federal government is envisioning a dash or a marathon – or whether states will want to run the race at all.

Green Quiz: Geothermal Energy

Honza Soukup

Over 450 geothermal power projects are being developed around the world today. According to the World Bank, nearly 40 countries have enough geothermal potential to meet a significant proportion of their electricity needs.

Which region of the world supports the largest collection of geothermal plants in operation?

A. El Tatio-La Torta, Chile

B. Nesjavellir, Iceland

C. Soultz-sous-Forêts, France

D. The Geysers, Northern California

Be one of the first three responders to email the correct answer to info@earthshare.org and you’ll win a green prize from EarthShare.

The Boeing Dreamliner 787, poised to retake the skies soon, was one approach to more efficient flight. But aviation is looking to geared turbofan engines and radically new shapes and materials for deeper cuts in fuel consumption.

Two news items surrounding greenhouse gas emissions moved over the past week. One on the trajectory of said emissions from government number-crunching. The other on what the proposed Keystone pipeline might mean for emissions.

We start with Keystone. On Monday the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in [pdf] on the Keystone XL pipeline project. Its conclusion? ”Insufficient information.”

A Hole in Proponents’ Arguments for the Proposed Pipeline

Remember the draft supplemental environmental impact statement* on TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that would allow crude from Canadian tar sands to flow to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries? Prepared for the State Department, which must OK the project because it crosses an international border, the draft statement concluded with music to the ears of the pipeline’s proponents: “The proposed project … would [pose] no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed Project route.” (See my post for more on the draft statement.)

After it was released on March 1, interested parties and agencies had 45 days to submit comments on the draft and the pipeline, which has become one of the most contentious environmental issues in Obama’s presidency. That public comment period ended at midnight on Monday, and among the reported tens of thousands of comments (some say over a million) that poured in during the comment period was a seven-page reaction from the Environmental Protection Agency submitted just under the wire.

Need help on the government-speak? E0-2 or Environmental Objection #2 refers, as indicated, to an objection on environmental grounds because of “insufficient information” or because, as not indicated, the EPA has “identified new reasonably available alternatives that are within the spectrum of alternatives analyzed in the draft EIS, which could reduce the environmental impacts of the action.” Did you get all that? If not, basically EPA is saying that it doesn’t buy the State Department’s assessment because it failed to consider all the options.

One Sticking Point: Estimated Emissions from Tar Sands Oil

A major EPA objection to the impact statement concerned the State Department’s assessment that the pipeline itself, as a conduit for transporting bitumen from Canadian tar sands, would have little impact on greenhouse gases. The stated reasoning for such a conclusion: Even if the pipeline were not built, the tar sands oil production would be largely unaffected as other means of transport (e.g., rail, other pipelines) would be used to bring the heavy crude to market.

EPA was not convinced:

“We note that the discussion in the DSEIS regarding energy markets, while informative, is not based on an updated energy-economic modeling effort. The DSEIS includes a discussion of rail logistics and the potential growth of rail as a transport option, however we recommend that the Final EIS provide a more careful review of the market analysis and rail transport options. … recognizing the potential for much higher per barrel rail shipment costs than presented in the DSEIS. This analysis should consider how the level and pace of oil sands crude production might be affected by higher transportation costs and the potential for congestion impacts to slow rail transport of crude.”

EPA also noted that the State Department’s evaluation of pipeline alternatives is not “sufficient to enable a meaningful comparison to the proposed route and other alternatives.” In addition, the agency reported that it would like to see a more rigorous analysis of the existing pipeline corridor, as it avoids not only the Sands Hills aquifer (which was one of the sticking points of the first proposed route) but the Ogallala aquifer as well. (See related interactive map of the route: “Keystone XL: Mapping the Flow of Tar Sands Oil.”)

What’s Comes Next?

So what happens now is more hurry up and wait. The release of the draft environmental impact statement and the conclusion of the public comment period following that release means that the preparation of a final impact statement can now officially begin. That “Final Supplemental EIS,” said State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell, would include “additional analysis and incorporate public comments received on the Draft SEIS.” As for all those many public comments, State has promised to publish each and every one. ($ub req’ed) There’s no word yet on when.

And remember all this is for just the environmental assessment. In all, eight federal agencies [pdf] will need to weigh in on the project before State renders its decision.

Whither U.S. CO2 Emissions?

While we’re on the subject of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. it is relevant to note that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) has begun releasing its Annual Energy Outlook for 2013. One item published last week was the forecast for U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions through 2040. This projection along with EIA’s past projections between 2004 and 2012 is illustrated below.

There is certainly good news here. Since 2004, the EIA’s estimate for future U.S. emissions has consistently fallen for each projection. As discussed previously (see here, here and here), this decrease can be attributed to a number of factors including the global recession, fuel-switching away from coal and petroleum and toward natural gas, decreasing energy intensity, milder winters, and so on.

But lest we get carried away congratulating ourselves, the news from the EIA’s 2013 projection is not all roses. While U.S. emissions have been falling since the economic downturn of 2008, EIA projects they will begin a modest upturn in 2017 that will continue through 2040.

And even given the sizable (some might say remarkable) decrease in our projected emissions over the next few decades, as compared to earlier projections, the current forecast falls quite short of the emissions reductions President Obama committed to as part of the Copenhagen Accord [pdf], as illustrated in the above graphic. (See also here.)

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons EPA is concerned about the potential emissions from tar sands. Of course the State Department’s answer could be that if EIA just keeps ratcheting down its emissions projections, maybe we’ll meet our emissions commitment without even trying. So why worry about a little bit of extra greenhouse gas emissions (on the order of about 19 million metric tons annually, according to EPA estimates) from tar sands? Why indeed.

____________

End Note

* Because of a previously proposed route for the pipeline, which had its own environmental impact statement (which was ultimately rejected), the statement issued in March is a “supplemental” environmental impact statement [pdf]. A final supplemental statement will be issued after more analysis and review.

The great military book is from early China, The Art of War. There is no art of soldiering. You heavy up, go for a walk, look for trouble for a few hours. Or days.

Pete Newell is a U.S. Army colonel. Soldiering doesn’t change, he says. Technology does.

“The average weight on a soldier’s back,” says Newell, “is some-where around 104 pounds. 27 of it [is] batteries.”

Colonel Newell is the director of the Rapid Equipping Force – REF – a think tank, hardware store, tech lab for combat soldiers. A perfect solution to a soldier problem – a Humvee redesigned against IEDs, for instance, might take years.

REF tries to find pretty good answers that already exist, or are about to exist. “What we’ll describe is, ‘Find the first, best, fastest solution we can,’” explains Newell.

Here’s an example, something REF helped develop to answer a soldier problem – again, with IEDs. And if you wonder what all those batteries are for – well, Newell says, “It’s called the Thor III.”

Thor. It sounds heavy.

“The piece of equipment itself weighs 25 pounds,” explains Newell. “Over a three-day patrol, a platoon of 28 soldiers will have three of these systems because of the bands that they operate at.”

Thor is a signal jammer. Everybody adapts technology, including the people trying to kill us. A favorite tactic: a hidden bomb with a cellphone trigger. Wait for the soldiers to get close, call the number…boom. If you’re going out on patrol for three days, you want a Thor III, batteries included. If Thor is working, the bomb triggers will not.

Newell says it takes 238 pounds of batteries to run Thor III for 3 days. “So, [that’s] 238 pounds distributed across 28 bodies, on top of the weight for the system and the weight of all the other stuff they’re carrying.”

Colonel Newell is a former brigade commander, awarded a silver star and a unit commendation for leadership at Fallujah, the biggest fight in Iraq.

He knows soldiering, but when he took over REF three years ago, he didn’t think about energy. “I would tell you that I really did not see that as a major task for the Rapid Equipping Force,” he says.

But combat outposts – remote, battlefield camps for 20 to 150 soldiers – use a lot of fuel. The convoys to supply them are magnets for bombs and snipers. They’re the Army’s single greatest vulnerability in Afghanistan. It’s also true for a single soldier – heavied up, and walking patrol.

The Thor III is a REF solution. Too heavy, too power-hungry…but it works right now with existing technology, until they design something better.

Still, in January, at REF headquarters at Fort Belvoir outside Washington, the colonel was more excited by something else. He pulled out a solar panel. “These are solar recharging blankets and you’ve probably seen them before. So this is a 10-watt blanket and it’s about two feet by three feet, the size of a poster.”

It folds neatly, it weighs 12-ounces, and it comes in camo. Its 10-watts of power is enough to fully charge two smart phones in an hour.

Nine months ago, Newell says, this was the best thing he could find on the market for being developed.

Then he put aside the poster-size charger and showed me what looked like a camo napkin.

“This is a 10-Watt solar blanket,” he explains. “This weighs 3.8 ounces. So, within nine months, we went from what we thought was really, really, really good to a 28% efficient solar cell, and reduced the size down to a third of what it was before.”

REF just bought two kilowatts of these cells for $2 million – $100 per watt. That is way too expensive for normal use, but it’s a tenth what the cells would have cost a year ago.

And in another two years, Alta Devices – the Silicon Valley company that makes them – hopes to have the cost down to $10 a watt.

Meanwhile, soldiers are going to be using these, and if they come to trust the mats, maybe some of those 27 pounds of batteries can stay back at base.

For all the technological wonders, REF’s social tech impressed me most.

The fuel-eating combat outposts I mentioned earlier – REF is prototyping a radical redesign. They put one up at a gunnery range by Fort Bliss, Texas, and got two-dozen soldiers to live in it for two weeks.

And then REF hired a leading Silicon Valley marketing firm, IDEO, to run a three-day exercise to try to understand what the soldiers had learned, and what they would change.

It’s the kind of thing very big tech firms do – because it works. REF thinks of the soldier as the customer. Among changes the soldiers suggested: an emergency intercom system. REF is working on it.

REF directors – Colonel Newell and those before him – spend a lot of time with high tech firms and venture capitalists, and at the best engineering and business schools, trying to understand how to be very, very agile.

“Stop trying to solve the problem,” the colonel advises. “Spend your time trying to understand what it is you’re supposed to be doing. The problem will eventually solve itself.”

Colonel Newell left his post at REF last week. He’s retiring from the Army. The Department of Defense has just decided to change REF’s status from interesting experiment to permanent agency. We’ll see how that works.

But I was in the Army long ago, and even at Fort Bliss for a while. It wasn’t this smart.

Alex Chadwick is the host of the public radio series, BURN: An Energy Journal, from SoundVision productions and American Public Media’s Marketplace, produced with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

More than 500 attendees at the National Hydropower Association Annual Conference roared to their feet as Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers took to the podium during the event’s opening session earlier today.

More than 500 attendees at the National Hydropower Association Annual Conference roared to their feet as Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers took to the podium during the event’s opening session earlier today.

The Unsung Renewable Energy: Geothermal

nicksarebi / flickr

When it comes to renewable energy, solar and wind power take the
spotlight. Their power plants are highly visible and iconic: most people
instantly recognize solar panels and spinning wind turbines. But ask someone to
describe a geothermal plant and the task is more challenging.

Despite this, use of geothermal power is growing fast. Over
450 geothermal plants are in production around the world, up from just 30
several years ago. About 175 of those are located in the US. The world’s only
green-powered country, Iceland, gets nearly 30% of its electricity from geothermal power (and almost 90% of its heat and hot water).

So how does it work? As the name suggests, geothermal harvests the
energy produced by the earth’s hot core. Pipes are drilled into the ground and
the steam or heat that escapes is either used to generate electricity or is
directed straight to a building for space heating. You can usually find billowy
white clouds of steam surrounding a geothermal power plant.

Unlike conventional energy sources like coal and gas, geothermal power
doesn’t produce dangerous greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide or methane. One
of Iceland’s most iconic tourist spots, the Blue Lagoon (pictured above), was
created by diverting water unearthed by a nearby geothermal plant. Geothermal
also has an advantage over other renewable technologies in its consistency: the
heat produced by the earth’s core never wanes.

It’s not just utility companies that are taking advantage of
geothermal power. Individual homeowners are building smaller geothermal
installations too. Geothermal heat pumps (also known as “ground source heat
pumps”) that draw heat from the ground beneath one’s home or business can slash
HVAC costs. More than 600,000 U.S. homes and other buildings already use such
pumps, which are placed at a depth of 20 feet or deeper.

Harvesting
geothermal energy doesn’t come without its challenges. Large power plants can
only be built in certain regions, typically near fault lines. It takes time and
money to find the best place to put one. So far the US has geothermal plants in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and
Wyoming (although smaller systems can be installed just about anywhere).

In large
systems that aren’t “closed-loop”, sulfur dioxide (SO2) from the steam can be a
minor pollution concern – although SO2 emissions are
about 30
times lower per megawatt-hour than from coal plants, the nation’s largest
source of SO2 emissions. Drilling for geothermal has also been known to cause small earthquakes
and certain designs can compete with other users for freshwater, albeit
significantly less than conventional forms of energy like coal.